README

This project was first conceived to manipulate Apple's software restore packages (IPSWs) and hence much of it is geared specifically toward that format. Useful tools to read and manipulate the internal data structures of those files have been created to that end, and with minor changes, more generality can be achieved in the general utility. An inexhaustive list of such changes would be selectively enabling folder counts in HFS+, switching between case sensitivity and non-sensitivity, and more fine-grained control over the layout of created dmgs.

THE CODE HEREIN SHOULD BE CONSIDERED HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL

Extensive testing have not been done, but comparatively simple tasks like adding and removing files from a mostly contiguous filesystem are well proven.

Please note that these tools and routines are currently only suitable to be accessed by other programs that know what they're doing. I.e., doing something you "shouldn't" be able to do, like removing non-existent files is probably not a very good idea.

LICENSE

This work is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3. The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file.

DEPENDENCIES

The HFS portion will work on any platform that supports GNU C and POSIX conventions. The dmg portion has dependencies on zlib and optionally on libcrypto from openssl. If libcrypto is not available, then all FileVault related actions will fail, but everything else should still work. To deliberately disable FileVault support, use CFLAGS=-UHAVE_CRYPT.

USING

The targets of the current repository are three command-line utilities that demonstrate the usage of the library functions. The dmg portion of the code has dependencies on the HFS+ portion of the code. The "hdutil" section contains a version of the HFS+ utility that supports directly reading from dmgs. It is separate from the HFS+ utility in order that the hfs directory does not have dependencies on the dmg directory.

To build everything:

cmake .
make

After running cmake, individual projects can also be built like:

make -C hfs
make -C dmg
make -C hdutil